


when my time comes around, lay me gently in the cold dark earth

by bisexualparrish



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish is a Disaster Bisexual, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25555399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualparrish/pseuds/bisexualparrish
Summary: For years, Adam Parrish has known about his curse—that his true love will die if he kisses him. He didn’t believe in curses, or the supernatural. It didn’t matter to Adam, and so he hadn’t allowed it to become any sort of problem. And for a long time, it wasn’t.Until now.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 34
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first time writing a fic, so I’m rather nervous about how this will turn out. I haven’t seen this idea done before, so I hope I do it justice! This first chapter is a prologue of sorts; it kind of just sets things up. I’m not really sure how many chapters this will have. I put it at 10 for now, but that will probably change as I write this, depending on what happens. Hope you enjoy <3

Fourteen-year-old Adam Parrish wasn’t exactly one for believing in the supernatural, magical, or uncanny. He was too analytical of a thinker to blindly believe such things. He’d accept nothing without proof, wouldn’t even give it a second thought until something supernatural or occult happened to him directly.

There was no time, or reason, to believe in things that he didn’t know for a fact existed. Had any possibility of being real. He hardly believed in himself half the time. He hardly believed that his friend Blue liked him at all. He didn’t believe he was deserving of her friendship and affection.

Adam Parrish considered it a miracle that Blue Sargent called him her friend.

Blue Sargent was quite possibly the tiniest thing Adam had ever known. In sixth grade, when she and Adam had met for the first time, it wasn’t as noticeable, since _both_ Blue and Adam were quite short. It took a couple of years for them both to grow into their bodies. In sixth grade, Blue’s head lined up with Adam’s nose. When Adam reached fourteen—Blue was still thirteen—however, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Blue Sargent was doomed to a fate of never quite reaching five feet, much to her chagrin.

Adam always just grinned at her, ruffled her dark choppy hair, and told her, “The fact that you’re short hardly matters. You always make up for height with fierceness, anyway.” The first part of his statement earned Adam a shove, but the second earned him a beaming smile that made his heart leap in his chest in happiness.

The statement wasn’t false in the slightest. Adam always mused that Blue Sargent could beat up half the population of their hometown, Henrietta, Virginia, without getting even slightly winded. His always aching bicep, unfairly subjected to her playful, yet unbearably constant, shoves and punches, could testify to that.

Blue Sargent was a tiny, but very powerful being, fiercely sensible and sensibly fierce. Adam Parrish loved her like he loved nothing else.

This made it easy for Adam to believe Blue when she told him she was psychic, that her entire family was psychic. Adam’s unwavering loyalty and faith in Blue made it impossible _not_ to. Adam was analytical and logical to the point of annoying—which Blue never failed to inform him of—but something about Blue Sargent drowned that part of him out.

Adam knew he wasn’t capable of loving or being loved, but somehow Blue was the exception, and he took pride in that fact. There were not many things in his life that he took pride in, but his friendship with Blue would always be one that he _did_.

And because of this, it was also easy for Adam to agree to accompany Blue to her home when she asked him about it one fall day after school, over a medium pizza and two small sodas.

It was a rather warm fall day in Henrietta that afternoon, when Blue and Adam walked two blocks from Mountain View Middle School, to Nino’s, a pizza place at the edge of the historic area of town.

While they walked, Blue was chattering animatedly about how her mom had actually given her money for the both of them to buy what they wanted at Nino’s, something she had been asking about a lot recently.

“Money’s always tight,” she’d told Adam. “Mom can’t give it to me very often.” She always told Adam this, each time as if he’d never heard it before. It bothered Adam that he couldn’t contribute any money to the meal, but Blue reminded him that it wasn’t _her_ money, it was her mother’s.

Adam supposed it was supposed to be reassuring, but all it reminded him was that _his_ mother would never give him money to buy anything other than groceries they desperately needed. Adam’s father would probably beat him if he asked for pizza money.

Blue noticed his frown and grabbed his hand gently, linking their fingers together. “Whatever you’re thinking, Adam, don’t worry about it! Everything will be fine.” Adam grimaced at her words. He desperately wished he could believe them.

They stopped in front of Nino’s. Oh. They’d arrived. Blue gazed high above at the large neon sign that read _Nino’s Pizza._ Right below it, in smaller letters: _Proudly Serving Henrietta Since 1976._ Then at a sign more at her eye level, informing them both about how Nino’s served the best iced tea in Henrietta. For some reason, Adam seriously doubted this. “Come on!”

They walked in. Immediately, Adam grimaced at the smell of damp herbs and cheap beer. He glanced over at Blue hesitantly, who offered a disdainful glance at the inside of the restaurant, as if she disagreed with the interior design choices.

Adam felt he agreed. The restaurant was so very _neon_ ; it hurt his eyes to stare long enough. He wondered if everything in the 70s was like this. The loud music Adam recognized as the Beastie Boys combined with the even louder ruckus of the boys who occupied the restaurant after school hours made it hard to hear even his own thoughts.

Blue was speaking to the host when Adam finally was pulled out of said thoughts, requesting a booth for two in the corner of the restaurant, away from all the noise. He sent a quick prayer of thanks.

They both slid into the booth, a bright orange vinyl that was rough and peeling under Adam’s fingers. Blue sat across from him. Both of them looked at the menu for a few minutes, deciding what could be bought with the little money they had. Blue’s sensibility made her decide to leave some of it left over.

A few minutes of heavy silence had settled between them as they chewed their pizza and sipped at their sodas. Heavy silence, of course, minus the music and chatter of Aglionby boys on the other side of the restaurant.

Adam hadn’t noticed they were Aglionby boys until he had taken a closer look at their clothing—khaki pants, expensive shoes, a V-neck sweater with an embroidered raven on the breast, black ties untied after a long day. Sharp smirks and loud voices that demanded the attention of the entire room, tousled hair and gloriously tanned skin, a product of vacationing at someplace like Costa Rica, or Bali, or wherever it was that rich boys and their politician families vacationed.

Aglionby Academy, Henrietta’s local private school, was located six blocks from Nino’s, and the boys who attended it had subjugated the restaurant and made it their prime destination for after school hangouts.

Aglionby boys were the type of boy that Adam could only dream of being. He didn’t have money, a mansion, a fancy car, parents who cared for him, or any semblance of a future. He lived in his parents’ double wide in the dead grass fields of Henrietta. He was dirt poor; he had been cursed by being born of the dirt that only existed at the bottom of Aglionby boys’ expensive shoes and empty bottles of cheap beer and bruises from his father’s fists and mindless anger and misery.

Adam dreamed of being an Aglionby boy, of having what Aglionby boys had. He wished that he didn’t have to worry so much: about if he would have enough food tomorrow; if his father wouldn’t beat him bloody in the evening when he came home from school; if he would be able to complete his homework and keep his grades impeccable despite having to miss class often to hide his bruises and cuts and scrapes; if his shitty bike didn’t break down or gain a flat tire on the way to school. Adam Parrish wished for and dreamed of and wanted a lot of things that he could never have.

Oh, how Adam _hated_ Aglionby Academy, the boys who attended, and everything they represented. It was a good thing, Adam supposed, that the entire rest of Henrietta’s population hated them too.

He managed a smile at Blue when she met his eyes. She followed his gaze to where it rested on the Aglionby boys, his expression containing a paradoxical mixture of contempt and longing.

She hefted a quick glare at the boys before turning back to Adam. “Don’t even give them attention, Adam. They’re all a bunch of bastards.”

Adam almost laughed at his sensible friend’s use of the word _bastard_. He refrained and instead arched an eyebrow at her.

Blue rolled her eyes at him. “ _What_?” she asked pointedly. “It’s not like I’m wrong.”

He smiled to himself, shaking his head, and instead said, “I didn’t say you were. I just didn’t expect you to curse like that.” Especially at someone older than the both of them. One of the things he admired about Blue was her respect for her elders. Somehow, the raven boys of Aglionby Academy did not fall into the category of someone who deserved her respect. Adam didn’t blame her; anyway, it wasn’t like the boys were much older. Blue and Adam were both in eighth grade already. Close enough.

“Oh, please,” scoffed Blue. She lifted her straw from her soda and pointed it in the direction of the raven boys sitting nearest to them. “I bet a hundred bucks those guys have said worse.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can bet a lot more than a hundred bucks on that,” said Adam. It wasn’t very easy to make fun of these raven boys with Blue, because she didn’t know just how much Adam longed to _be_ them. He hated himself for it.

“Listen,” Blue said. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Sure,” Adam replied. “What’s up?” A blanket of uneasiness settled in his gut, though for what reason, Adam wasn’t sure. A premonition, perhaps.

“You know how I have… headaches a lot, right?” Blue asked him slowly, as if gauging his reaction.

Adam knew, of course, that Blue frequently had headaches of the psychic variety when she was around him. He didn’t know what they meant, and Blue had never told him. It didn’t stop him from feeling bad, but Blue insisted that they weren’t really painful.

“Yeah,” Adam echoed.

“Well,” Blue began, “they’re kind of getting worse. I wanted to ask if you wanted to come to my house today.” At Adam’s blank look, not understanding the correlation in these two statements, she clarified, “For a reading.”

Adam was silent for a moment. _Oh._ He still didn’t know what it meant for him, that he seemed to be the cause for Blue’s headaches. But something about her tone and the way she was asking unnerved him.

And yet, there was no way for Adam to say no to Blue.

“Sure,” he heard himself say. “Sounds like a plan. Besides, I’ve always wanted to see your house.”

Blue smiled at him. His heart leaped again.

They ate the rest of their pizza in silence. They drank their sodas and Adam didn’t think about Aglionby Academy again.

When they were finished with their food, Blue slid out of the booth and walked over to the checkered counter to pay. Adam stayed in the booth, so she was out of earshot, but he didn’t miss how Blue asked the person at the counter to use the restaurant phone.

She dialed a number and spoke to whoever was on the phone for a few minutes. Her face glowed lime green in the neon light. By the time she made her way back to Adam, he was ready to leave. He felt like using the restroom, but something told him that the co-ed bathrooms in the restaurant wouldn’t be agreeable or pleasant. He refrained.

“Mom will be here soon to pick us up,” Blue said. “I hope it’s okay that we’re going today. If you want, we can go another day.” She glanced at him worriedly. Adam had never revealed to her his turbulent home life, but he knew Blue wasn’t stupid. She assumed, at least, that Adam’s parents were very, very strict.

“It’s alright,” said Adam, his Henrietta accent slipping out against his will. “As long as I’m home before dinner, my parents should be fine with it.” This wasn’t so much a lie, as it was something that Adam was unsure about. He had no way of knowing what his father would or wouldn’t be fine with, even with the years of practice he’d had. It differed with the day, and his father’s mood, really. But, of course, there was no way Adam would be able to explain any of this to Blue without sacrificing the last of his dignity, so he simply settled for an untruth. No matter how much it hurt his heart to lie to Blue.

Blue beamed. Then she glanced out the window. Adam followed her gaze, to where an old blue Ford pulled into the lot. He couldn’t see very clearly from where he and Blue were sitting, but he was pretty sure he could see three figures already in the tiny car. Adam wasn’t sure if both Blue and him could even fit.

She was standing up and motioned for him to as well. Adam followed her out the door of Nino’s and was immediately grateful that he wouldn’t have to breathe that dank air that seemed to only flow through its air-conditioning vents anymore. He stood in place for a second, and breathed in the clear, Henrietta autumn air greedily.

Adam realized Blue was already halfway to the car. He hurried to catch up with her. As they both approached the car, its driver opened the car door and stepped out.

Adam’s first thought was that the taller woman’s dark brown hair was so dark it could have been a deep blue—despite the green streetlamp illuminating them all that buzzed nervously overhead. It reminded him remarkably of the very short friend of his next to him. Adam’s second thought was that, of course— _duh!_ —this must have been Blue’s mother.

“Hi, mom,” Blue said. She turned to Adam. “This is my mom.” To her mother: “Mom, this is Adam Parrish.”

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Adam,” Blue’s mother said to him with a pearly smile. Like him, she had a slight Henrietta accent. She held out a hand. “I’m Maura Sargent.”

“Nice to meet you too, ma’am,” Adam replied, mainly out of habit rather than not wanting to call her by name. This time he didn’t bother to clip his vowels. He shook her hand firmly.

“Oh,” Maura said thoughtfully, to Blue. “He’s a polite one.” She smiled at them both. “How about we start heading home.” To Adam, she said: “You can take the front seat.”

Blue glared at her mother, before harrumphing and sliding into the back seat. Adam threw Blue an apologetic glance. He felt slightly awkward at being offered the front seat, but he got the impression from Maura’s tone that there was to be no further argument.

It was only after Maura had pulled out of the parking lot when Adam realized that he, Blue, and Blue’s mother were the only occupants of the car. Though he could have sworn he had seen three figures in the car when they were still in the restaurant, that didn’t seem to be the case. Adam felt he must have been going mad.

***

When they arrived at 300 Fox Way, Adam knew immediately that this was exactly the type of house someone like Blue Sargent lived in.

It was a bright blue house with a rickety porch that didn’t look very agreeable to walk across. The house itself was nestled around a thicket of trees that reminded Adam heavily of the way a witch’s house was surrounded by forest on all sides. He reckoned that perhaps that was the idea.

Maura parked the Ford on the curb. There wasn’t a driveway that Adam could see. The three of them exited the car and walked across the grass toward the front steps. It squelched uncomfortably underneath Adam’s worn sneakers and it smelled damp, like it was watered recently.

Blue led Adam through the door. In his peripheral vision, he caught the word PSYCHIC hand-painted in small lettering on a board that hung just outside the door. And below that, _By Appointment Only._ As they made their way inside the house, maneuvering through narrow hallways that were made even more narrow with the sheer expanse of women that seemed to move through them in one given moment. Some walls were painted blues and purples, others donned mismatched wallpapers, and the rest were empty off-white. Several knick-knacks haphazardly hung or were pinned on the walls. The house was unbelievably eclectic and odd. Adam felt even more strongly that the place was _meant_ to house Blue Sargent. It was so very fitting for her. Perhaps his friend was the way she was precisely _because_ she was born and raised in a house like this.

Blue surveyed Adam nervously, as if she wasn’t sure what his opinion of her house would be. He gave her a reassuring smile in response. He would choose living in a place like this over his double wide trailer any day of the week. 300 Fox Way was oddly charming.

Blue, Maura, and Adam approached a rickety staircase that Adam didn’t exactly want to climb for a fear that he might fall through the bottom, or something equally ridiculous. Maybe Blue only became his friend to eventually murder him in her attic. As they climbed, Adam shook his head at the irrational thought.

He followed them both through narrower hallways, passing rooms with closed doors until the three of them entered a room without a door. Blue smiled thinly at Adam. “This is the Reading Room.”

It, once again, looked exactly like what you would expect a room called the ‘Reading Room’ to look like. The walls were painted swirling blues and purples, similarly to downstairs, and there were mismatched vintage armchairs and a deep redwood table in the center of the room.

Of course, the room was decidedly _not_ special to Adam. What stood out, however, were the occupants in said room. One woman was dark-skinned and wore a sharp expression that he was afraid would cut him if he got too close. Her plum colored lips were pursed tightly. Frizzy dark brown hair, looking almost purple, was pulled out of her face with a red bandana. One single eyebrow arched close to her hair. The other… well, her pale face was staring at him with a burning intensity that made Adam feel slightly self-conscious. A cloud of long blond hair billowed behind her, all the way to her thighs. Her eyes were black as nothing, as if it was all pupil, no iris whatsoever.

As Adam met each woman’s gaze, he watched them both wince and place a hesitant finger to the underside of their jaw, as if feeling for a pulse. It struck him as very, very strange. Something told Adam that the women both were probably thinking the same of him.

Both of them looked to Blue. She lifted her right shoulder casually in response. “I told y’all.”

The two women took their seats, one on the far left, one on the far right. The middle seat was empty. For a second, Adam wondered who was missing, until he realized that Maura Sargent sat in the middle. He stared at them. They looked more like a three-headed entity rather than three separate women. This was probably the idea.

“You can sit down, Adam,” said Maura. Her voice was smooth and silky, utterly pacific.

Adam sat. Maura and the other two women stared at him without blinking. He was pretty sure his heart was pounding so loud that Blue and her family could all hear it loud and clear. It didn’t help that the entire room was completely silent. He could feel his pulse in his fingers, where they drummed on his thighs nervously.

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Blue, interjecting the heavy silence. “Stop freaking the poor guy out.”

All three women swung their gazes to Blue instead. It was an unnerving sight.

“Oh, stop it,” Blue said. She pointed to the woman with the cloud of hair. “That’s Persephone.” Next, she pointed to the plum-lipped one. “That’s Calla.”

Persephone tilted her head to the side, regarding him with an owl-like intensity. Calla’s eyebrow arched further toward her hair. She wasn’t looking at Adam, though; she was looking at Persephone.

“I’m Adam Parrish,” Adam said. This might have been unnecessary, because both Calla and Persephone looked unsurprised. They shared a glance.

Calla’s lips curled into the tiniest of smirks. “I like your shirt,” she said. Her voice was rough, the way a voice gradually formed into when it yelled often enough.

Adam’s eyes drifted to the t-shirt he was wearing. It was a dark shirt, Coca-Cola logo across the front in a faded combination of red and white.

“Don’t tease the poor boy,” said Persephone, softly enough that Adam wouldn’t have heard it if the way her words were articulated wasn’t so precise.

Calla slinked back into her chair.

“How are the headaches?” Maura asked carefully, facing Blue. Her fingertips tapped against each other gently.

“Getting worse,” Blue replied. “It’s why I brought him here today. It needed to be today.”

“Today’s good,” Persephone agreed, in her tiny voice. Adam rather liked listening to her speak. Persephone’s voice was soft, soothing, and gentle in every way his father’s voice was not. “Tomorrow would have been…” She didn’t finish her sentence.

Maura nodded soberly, her eyes darting to Adam just once. He didn’t really understand what the psychics were referring to, but he got the sense it was their… abilities at work.

“I have to warn you,” said Maura. “This reading will be accurate, but not specific.” Her tone suggested that this was something she reiterated often to her clients. It sounded bored.

Blue glanced at her mother apprehensively, as if she was doubting this statement this time around, and that it wasn’t exactly a good thing.

Maura rose from her chair suddenly, almost startling Adam. She retrieved what looked like a deck of cards from a shelf in the corner of the reading room. Persephone and Calla followed suit. Adam wondered if it was a regular occurrence for all three women to give a reading to one client at once.

He found himself looking over to Blue, more than once or twice, seeking something like assurance from her. She was leaning on the purple wall, hands in her pockets and eyes trained intensely on Maura, Persephone, and Calla. She must have felt Adam’s eyes on her, because she met his gaze finally.

Carefully she made her way to the table, sitting next to Adam. She leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be nervous, Adam.” She herself sounded rather dubious, though.

Maura shuffled her deck. Adam got a closer look and realized that it wasn’t a deck of ordinary cards; these cards had elaborately painted illustrations on it. _Tarot cards_. Adam didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. Persephone and Calla had their own respective deck of tarot cards as well, though each woman’s deck looked different in terms of the art.

Blue and her mother shared a long glance, and then Maura wordlessly handed Blue her tarot deck, and Persephone and Calla did as well. Blue dealt the cards in the first deck, and spread them out on the table, face down. Then she did the same with the other two decks.

Adam reached out to the deck on the far left. It was Calla’s. His hand hovered over the cards. At first he had considered how he would be able to know what card to choose. But once he was in the moment of choosing one, he knew exactly which one to choose. He gently thumbed a card, flipped it over, and flicked it face up on the table. _The Tower._

Calla only stared at him; expression inscrutable except for the eyebrow that was still arched toward her hair. It was the only indication that she was unbelievably interested.

He moved to the middle. Maura’s deck. He repeated the process. This time, he flipped another card over. _Knight of Penacles._

His arm shifted, this time, to the far right. Persephone’s deck. Adam’s eyes flicked upward, meeting Persephone’s black, black eyes. It was like gasoline. No, it was like nothing. Black as nothing, as absence of color. A true mirror of black. His hand hovered over the cards a few seconds longer than it did for the first two decks. His thumb and forefinger picked up a card and flipped it over. _Ten of Swords._

Someone inhaled sharply. At first, Adam thought it was himself. No. It was Blue, staring at the cards Adam had flipped over. He didn’t know what any of them meant. Maybe she did.

No. She wasn’t staring at any of the cards _he_ had flipped over. No, Blue was staring at Persephone. She had chosen a card of her own and flipped it over onto the table with a loud flick sound, right underneath Adam’s chin. He hadn’t noticed until he caught Blue’s gaze; saw her alarmed eyes.

Adam stared at Persephone’s card. _The Magician._ Something stirred inside him. His fingers tingled with pent up energy.

“The story is very important,” said Persephone, thoughtfully. “Beginning, middle, end.”

Beginning. _The Tower_. Middle. _Knight of Penacles._ End. _Ten of Swords._

_The Magician_ was the odd one out. Maybe _The Magician_ was his ending. Maybe not. Maybe he would be stabbed with ten swords at the end, like the illustration on the _Ten of Swords_ card indicated. Maybe he was the sword. Maybe he was the man. There was no way for Adam to know, was there?

“Good God,” Maura remarked. “Why didn’t you bring him to us earlier?” This was directed at Blue.

“It had to be today,” replied Blue. She lifted one shoulder casually. Her tone was final.

“He’s cursed,” Calla said. She said it like she was pointing an obvious fact out to the rest of the room.

“Excuse me?” Adam cut in. His Henrietta accent was slipping through, betraying his agitation. He had been uneasy this whole entire time, but Calla’s words were the last straw. He snapped.

“You heard me, Coca-Cola T-Shirt,” Calla said. Adam flushed. She continued, “You’re cursed.”

Adam swallowed audibly. This could have meant a million things. Yes, he was cursed. He was cursed to live with a lot of things. This was what it meant to be Adam Parrish. He hadn’t realized it was that obvious to everyone.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Blue Sargent,” Calla said harshly. “You know I’m right. How about you tell him? I know you’ve figured it out.”

Blue’s throat bobbed, but she didn’t speak. Maura held up a hand in warning. “Calla,” said Maura.

Calla huffed, but her mouth quirked a little when she said, “I say give it to him straight.”

A moment passed. Maura cleared her throat loudly, clearly disguising a chuckle. “Calla, that wasn’t funny.”

“You laughed.” An eyebrow raised.

Maura crossed her arms in indignation, glaring at Calla sharply. “I did _not_.”

Blue groaned reproachfully. “Mom!”

Maura turned to Blue, decently looking rather embarrassed and apologetic. “Sorry,” she said. Then, she turned to Adam. “Alright… how do I put this?”

“My curse?” Adam supplied. “What is it?”

Blue shared a look with her mother. Maura said, “I mean… it could be a blessing or a curse, depending on your views on the matter.”

Adam didn’t have the slightest idea about what Maura was talking about, but he went with it. It wasn’t like he had a choice. He thought perhaps she was trying to soften the blow for him.

“Just give it to me, uh, as Calla said—” Adam cleared his throat. “—straight.”

Calla grinned wickedly. Persephone only let out the smallest of sighs.

“Are you sure?” Maura asked. It wasn’t immediately clear to Adam exactly who she was talking to.

Persephone nodded earnestly. Her black eyes glittered darkly in the evening light that slipped in through the tree leaves outside the window. Adam was acutely aware of how late it was getting. “Calla’s right, Maura.”

Something curled in Adam’s gut, circling his stomach like vines and swirling branches. Tightening and tightening.

His fists clenched even tighter, muscles firmly wound together, trapped in an embrace they couldn’t escape. Something was trapping his hands, his lungs, his stomach, squeezing tight, not letting go.

The trees outside seemed to whisper, the fall wind weaving though the dense leaves, speaking a language that Adam didn’t speak or understand, but desperately wanted to. He was intuitively aware that he _ought_ to have understood it. It was a word that was on the tip of his tongue, but when he tried to chase it, it was just out of reach.

When had the window opened? Had the window always been open?

Adam looked down at his hands. Nothing was curling around them. They were empty, except for the crescent indents that his nails had pressed into his tanned, rough palms. He shook his hands out gently.

He tried to chase that feeling he had felt. Of the trees, the vines, the forest, the leaves. Curling within him, twirling and weaving themselves in his veins. The whispers he could have sworn he heard. Once again, it was just out of reach. The feeling, the sensation, leaked out of him like a drug. He wanted to feel that heady sensation again. He _needed_ to feel it again.

“Adam,” said Maura, her voice prodding Adam out of his thoughts.

Adam cleared his throat. “Sorry—did you say something?” He felt slightly awkward, and more than a tiny bit guilty that he hadn’t heard if she’d said something to him.

“You want to hear your curse?” asked Maura, in a tone that was way too cheerful for the words she had just spoken.

Adam nodded, suddenly nervous again.

Blue’s mother exhaled a long breath. She held both of her hands up in a placating gesture. “I don’t know how to say this so that it doesn’t sound completely unbelievable. So I’m just going to say it. If you—”

Maura was interrupted by Persephone. Blue gaped at the scene.

“Wait,” said Persephone, holding up a pale, small-fingered hand. She reached over to Calla’s deck of cards that was fanned and spread out on the red table. Her fingers found the card Adam had chosen earlier, _The Tower_.

“Sudden change,” Persephone whispered. “Chaos. Upheaval. A revelation. Awakening. A structure, solid as it is, built on false pretenses—on a weak foundation—cannot stand. It doesn’t take much to collapse, you know.”

Persephone turned her black eyes onto Adam. They burned through him, through every lie, secret, mask, and defense mechanism Adam had ever put up to protect himself. They saw his true soul, who he _was_ , as much as he tried to hide it from the world. Those black eyes, completely rid of iris, they _knew_.

It terrified Adam all the way to his bones.

“What’s more terrifying, in my opinion,” Persephone continued, as if she had read Adam’s thoughts, “is not knowing what awaits you on the ground as you fall.”

If Persephone had indeed read his thoughts, the second part of her statement rang clearly as a non sequitur. Upon closer consideration, Adam realized that she was talking about _The Tower_ ’s illustration; a silhouette falling out of the burning, crumbling tower that had been struck by lightning.

“Something’s about to change, boy,” said Calla, baring her teeth. “When you know, come back to Fox Way. Here. To me. Maybe I can help.”

Adam wasn’t sure how Calla, with her teeth bared and snapping, her sharp lips curling in disdain, her eyebrow forever arched in challenge, would be able to help _him_ with anything.

Being in the presence of the psychics of Fox Way, of these tarot cards, of that damned _Magician_ card, of the trees and evening wind outside, was giving Adam the sensation of the concepts of space and time and energy being rolled into a ball, flattened, and folded into itself again.

Adam looked at Calla questioningly; Calla simply lifted a noncommittal shoulder in response. She said, “You’ll know, kid. You’ll know.”

It was, by far, the nicest tone Calla had used with him his entire visit. It could have almost been considered soft, but it took more of a loose, detached interpretation from the listener for that particular conclusion to be reached.

All of this extra conversation was unnecessary; it only served to distract and prolong the inevitable. “What’s my curse?” Adam asked bluntly. That was the only thing he needed to know right now; everything else could wait.

“If you kiss your true love, he will die,” Blue said sharply. A silent, heavy moment passed, leaving the rest of the psychics, and Adam, speechless. “That’s your curse, Parrish.”

There were a few parts of this statement that stood out to Adam and caused three completely different reactions.

The word _kiss_ made his cheeks heat, as he _was_ a thirteen-year-old boy after all.

The words _true love_ refused to register in his head. He ignored them. They were irrelevant.

The word he focused on was _he._ _He_ will die. Not _he_ as in _Adam_. _He_ as in this said true love.

Adam flushed. He was ninety-nine percent sure he had never told anyone about that particular part. He could hardly bear to think about it himself. It was too complicated, too dangerous. Especially in a place like Henrietta, Virginia. Especially in a place like his parents’ trailer.

Calla’s eyebrow, unsurprisingly, was raised, farther than Adam thought was physically possible. “Damn,” she said. She might have sounded almost impressed.

“As if it’s a surprise,” Maura muttered, obviously referring to Calla’s ‘straight’ joke from earlier.

“So,” Adam began, slowly, “you’re saying, I have a true love. And if I kiss _him_ —” he tried not to flush again at this part, but he may have failed, in retrospect, “—he will die. Meaning, I would have killed him.”

Blue grimaced. “Yeah. That’s about it.”

Adam faintly remembered Maura’s words from earlier. _This reading will be accurate, but not specific_. “That’s oddly specific.”

Blue raised an eyebrow in a way that most definitely was learned from Calla. “You’re rather calm, Adam, for just having heard that you can’t kiss the guy you’re fated to be with.”

Adam thought she was being rather blunt, but he didn’t respond to that part. “I don’t really believe in true love,” he said. It was as much the truth as anything else he could have said. Love itself simply wasn’t something Adam believed existed. His parents didn’t love each other; his parents obviously didn’t love their own child. If the people who were _supposed_ to love Adam, didn’t love him, then who else would?

“Do you even swing that way?” Blue asked dubiously.

Adam, once again, flushed. He had to fix that habit, of blushing every time this was mentioned. He had a feeling it would be mentioned more than once, now that this was out.

It was rather unfair, he thought, that he wasn’t given enough time to figure himself out before it was determined by an outside force who he was. _What_ he was. How he felt.

“I swing both ways,” Adam clarified. No point dwelling over it now, or trying to convince himself it wasn’t true, he supposed.

Blue managed a smile. “Okay,” she said. He was grateful that it was the end of that particular part of the conversation. Adam didn’t have enough information within himself to continue further.

“To be honest,” Adam said. “I thought it was going to be worse.”

“It does depend on your personal definition of worse, I suppose,” Maura mused to the ceiling, her chin resting in her palm. “But yes. It is something in your control, so if you stay sensible then life should be relatively normal for you. Unchanging. Unless, of course, you meet your true love and are so taken by him that you find you absolutely must kiss him. Then, perhaps, it could become a problem.”

Adam seriously doubted this. “It won’t be a problem,” he said firmly, no place for uncertainty. There was no way Adam had a true love. And even if he did, there was no way he could love or _be_ loved that way. It just wasn’t something he could even inherently visualize happening. As much as he felt the sensation of _otherness_ within himself, in Fox Way, in the presence of these psychics, he couldn't take this curse seriously.

Maura smiled thinly. “I’m sure.”

Adam glanced out the window one more time. The light was getting more golden, bordering on red orange. His father would kill him if he got home any later. Dread settled in his stomach. How could he have allowed time to pass this aimlessly? He needed to get home.

Blue abruptly stood up from her chair. “We need to leave.”

Her mother nodded. “Adam, I’ll drop you home, okay?”

“No!” Adam said, before he could stop himself or school his voice into nonchalance. “I mean, you can just drop me off at school. My bike is still there. I’ll bike the rest of the way home.”

He didn’t know what would be worse; taking the risk of biking all the way home, possibly getting home after his father did, or arriving at the trailer in someone else’s blue Ford where his mother could see from the hazy window. Or—allowing Blue and her mother to see where Adam Parrish was born. Where he lived, and exactly what dirt he had been created from.

“Okay,” Maura said.

They exited the reading room. Blue and Maura passed the door frame and disappeared, but someone caught Adam’s hand before he could leave. He turned around and stared at his hand. Wait—nobody had caught it. But Persephone met his eyes from where she was still seated in her chair.

Persephone said, “Love is a fickle creature, dear. The thing with fickle creatures is, they’re harder to control. Even for someone so very willful. It will surprise you.” Her small, pale shoulders shrugged. “Careful,” she whispered in warning.

And with that, she turned away from Adam, the conversation finished.

Then, Calla called out to him. “Parrish.” He turned in her direction. “Sure, us psychics can interpret futures. You might think you’re stuck where you are, that there’s no way to change what you feel is inevitable. You do have a future, even if you don’t think you do. You _can_ change your own future. But you gotta fight for it, kid. Remember that.”

By some miracle, Adam somehow managed to navigate his own way out of 300 Fox Way, and out onto the porch, where he saw Blue and Maura approaching the car they had arrived in.

The sun set over Henrietta as they drove to Mountain View Middle School to pick up Adam’s bike, and then surprisingly fit it into the trunk with reluctant success. They drove to Adam’s parents’ trailer. He refused to call it home, no matter how much it _hurt_.

Sunsets in the dead grass fields of Henrietta, among the double wide trailers, were both beautiful, and terrible things. The sun shone across the horizon, illuminating the normally dull, beige wheat stalks a gorgeous, sun-kissed gold. The sunset reflected the shimmering blue of the mountains in the far east. It bathed the stark blue sky in brilliant reds and oranges. It made Adam want to settle himself in the wheat and dead grasses, lie on his back and gaze up at the sky, tracing the horizon and the white clouds with his index fingers.

But sunsets, especially in the summer and fall, also were a brutal indication that his father was soon to arrive in their beat-up Toyota pick-up, from either work or the liquor store or God-knew-where-else. He was to arrive angry, or drunk, or exhausted; prone to snap at Adam or his mother; or hit something or Adam; or pass out on the couch if Adam was particularly lucky that day. For perspective, Adam wasn’t lucky ninety percent of days.

Tonight, however, it was clear that the sunset-bathed sky of Henrietta was slipping quickly into dusk. The gold fields were turning darker with every passing second. Adam could hear his heart pounding in his ribcage, ticking off those seconds. Counting down the inevitable.

Maura stalled the car on the road just before the turn into the street where his trailer was. Adam hefted the bike out of the trunk and got on it.

Blue was there beside him, waving goodbye shyly. “Good night, Adam,” she said. She stepped closer, pulled his slender hand into her smaller one, and squeezed just once. Then she let go and got into the front seat of the car, and Maura drove away.

Adam biked the rest of the way to his trailer. As predicted, the Toyota pick-up was indeed in the drive. The sun was now completely below the horizon, hidden. He approached the steps, clutching the railing. He knew his mother was watching through the window, and it didn’t offer any comfort, not like it might have when he was younger. He was old enough to be at fault, now.

He opened the door as quietly as he could. Adam exhaled in relief when he saw his father was passed out on the couch, slumped in an extremely awkward position, an empty beer bottle in his hand. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them when he felt his mother’s eyes on him.

“If you’re going to be out this late,” his mother said quietly. “You might as well be doing something useful. Get a job.”

“Okay,” replied Adam. He didn’t bother arguing with his mother, or trying to hold a conversation or any sort of small talk. It was long past the time when he was able to do any of those things.

Wordlessly, he left his mother in the kitchen and entered his tiny bedroom, slumping into bed with a leaden exhaustion he didn’t know he’d been carrying on his shoulders.

***

It was the summer before Adam’s freshman year of high school. After turning fifteen, Adam had realized that he was getting too old not to take control of his own life. Nobody was going to save him. Nobody was going to offer him an opportunity to leave Henrietta on a silver platter. To leave his parents’ trailer. To go to college.

Adam remembered words spoken to him by a particular occupant of his friend’s psychic family at 300 Fox Way. _You do have a future, even if you don’t think you do. But you have to fight for it._

This was how he ended up on the sidewalk next to 300 Fox Way, leaning his bike against the porch railing. He knocked on the door. Calla opened the door on the other side, awaiting him just as Adam predicted.

“Oh, Parrish,” Calla said, eyeing him noncommitally. “What a surprise.”

“Was that sarcastic?” Adam asked.

She didn’t reply to that. “Blue’s at work,” she said flatly.

“I’m not here to see Blue,” said Adam. “It’s you I wanted to see.”

Calla raised one eyebrow in response, but she shuffled to the side and allowed Adam to enter.

Adam was sitting in the psychics’ kitchen when Calla slammed a stack of papers on the table directly in front of him. “I’m guessing this is what you wanted,” said Calla with an indifferent shrug.

“How did you get these applications?” Adam asked in disbelief as he stared at the fancy lettering on the top of the front page and the typewriter print on the rest of it.

“I work at Aglionby as the office administrator, Parrish,” Calla said. “Being only a psychic doesn’t pay the bills around here. Surely you know enough about that, don’t you?”

He did. Adam nodded.

“How did you know this was what I was going to ask you about?” Adam asked. “I didn’t even know you worked there.”

“I told you last fall. You would need help. I would deliver.”

Adam flipped through the pages until he saw the tuition cost. His eyes widened considerably. He already knew it would be expensive, even by normal private school tuition standards, but he figured he could work over the summer and scrap enough money to start freshman year. He already worked at the garage fixing cars. But what he earned there plus what he already had saved up wasn’t even close to what he needed to pay to start this year. It wasn’t even half.

Adam let out a shuddering breath, betraying his distress. “Do they offer scholarships?” he asked quietly. That might be his saving grace.

Calla nodded. “They do. But it isn’t likely they’ll hand one over unless you’re truly exceptional. They might go for a partial scholarship, but I know your little mechanic gig won’t cover even that. You’re going to have to save up for a little longer, kid.”

Adam knew Blue would balk at the idea of Adam attending Aglionby. Adam himself hated that for so long he insulted Aglionby boys and loathed them, and yet the only way he would be able to get out of Henrietta for good was to _become_ one of them. In the loosest sense, of course—he would never truly be an Aglionby boy because he wasn’t rich; he didn’t have politician parents or a trust fund. Aglionby boys weren’t constrained by trivial things like money; they were rolling in it.

“What are my options?” Adam asked Calla.

Calla sighed brusquely. “Look, kid. I don’t know how much I can help. I can definitely get you in a meeting with the headmaster. I can have him take a look at your record, but middle school, unfortunately, doesn’t do much to impress. I’d suggest waiting a year before applying. Do your freshman year at Mountain View, take good classes and keep your GPA up. Get another job and save up during the year. Next summer you can apply for the scholarship and see if you can pay for it that year.”

Adam felt like crying, really, because he didn’t want to go to high school at Mountain View. The longer he waited, the less chance he would have to leave for good, to get out. The longer he had to stay with his parents in the trailer, the more chances there were for his father to beat him dead in the meantime.

If he couldn’t go to Aglionby freshman year, then he would try sophomore year. But he had to _try_. It wasn’t going to be easy; he knew. He had to fight tooth and nail for it.

And so that’s what Adam Parrish did. He got two more jobs, one at the warehouse and one at the factory, informing them that he was seventeen and needed to pay his way through college. He managed to convince his parents to let him attend. He told them he would get a scholarship and they wouldn’t have to pay a penny. He’d work his job (he didn’t tell them he had gotten two more jobs) and give them enough money so that they’d be satisfied he was getting useful. All of freshman year, he worked and worked and worked, suffering late nights at work and all-nighters studying for exams and completing homework. All the while trying to stay out of that damned trailer as much as he could, hanging out with Blue and suffering through as many extracurriculars and clubs as he could without passing out from exhaustion. He didn’t miss class as much anymore, which made him have to come up with more and more excuses as to why he had a black eye or why he had a busted lip or why his cheekbone was painted a dark purple.

It was the Adam Parrish way. He was miserable, of course, but he knew it had to be done. Aglionby would be harder than this, he told himself. If he couldn’t do this, then there was no way he would be able to handle Aglionby and its incredibly high standards of excellence.

Adam could handle it. He could.

He turned sixteen. He finally scrapped enough money to pay for tuition. He wouldn’t be able to stay at the dorms. He obtained a second-hand uniform, used books, low-price school supplies. He got a partial scholarship, not a full ride, like Calla had warned so long ago. You’re an exceptional student, Mister Parrish, Aglionby had told Adam, but there are other eager students waitlisted, who are in the position to pay full tuition. We are aware of your financial situation, and we want to help, but this is the best we can do, they said. You know how it is, Mister Parrish, they said. Grades must be impeccable, attendance record must be on par, or we won’t be able to cover your tuition. We are a pre-Ivy League private school, after all. We must retain our reputation of academic excellence and prestige, they said.

Adam could handle it. He could.

He _had_ to.

***

As it turned out, the hardest part for Adam wasn’t keeping his grades up and turning in his homework on time. The hardest part wasn’t making enough money so that he could pay his partial tuition.

The hardest part was trying to convince Aglionby Academy that Adam Parrish was worthy of attending. The hardest part was pretending he was a raven boy. That he was _one of them_.

The hardest part was trying to come to terms with the fact that he _wasn’t_ one of them, and that he never would be. The hardest part was knowing this fact, but still having to attend school side by side with them, trying to fool Aglionby and its raven boys into thinking that he wasn’t trailer trash, born of the dirt fields and dead grass and his father’s malicious fists and gasoline from the garage and his sweat and tears.

But Adam knew that Aglionby could _smell_ it on him. They could _hear_ it in his ill-suppressed Henrietta drawl. They could _see_ it on his second-hand uniform and tattered books.

Adam tried his best to ignore it all.

It was hard, because in all of his classes, there were politician-bred students with pearly smiles and congenial handshakes who were destined for Congress or the Senate. There were also lazy and careless students who barely attended class, street raced in the nights, and drank themselves into oblivion.

Adam Parrish, Henrietta-born, didn’t fit into either of these descriptions. It was just a reminder that the only people who had the chance to attend Aglionby and then the Ivy League colleges, were people who could easily pay their way through, or didn’t care enough to. Either way, true raven boys could do whatever they wanted without consequence or constraint.

In his classes, there were many students in Aglionby that were either one or the other, but two in particular stood out to him.

There was Richard Campbell Gansey III, looking presidential and king-like as he walked into any classroom. Adam was taken with the way he pulled out his politician’s smile and a voice that commanded the attention of the entire room. Captain of the Aglionby rowing team and debate member, son of a Congresswoman, owner of a name fit for a prince, Richard Gansey was the poster child for the heir of a dynasty. It was painful to look at him, with his All-American good looks and handsome Anglo-Saxon face.

And then there was the ever-present best friend of Gansey—Ronan Lynch. Lynch, on the other hand, with his disreputable method of wearing his uniform, blatant disrespect for the rules and people in general, was the poster child for negligence. He was the type of student who didn’t need or want to go to a place like Aglionby, but he did anyway, simply because he _could_. It was painful to look at him, too, with his angular, sharp features and savagely handsome face, always curled in either a cruel smirk or snarl.

It was easy to hate someone like Richard Gansey, someone who would never know what it was like to fight tooth and nail for something he wanted, instead of having it handed to him. It was easy to hate someone like Ronan Lynch, someone who had all the things Adam wished he could have, but didn’t care at all for them and took them for granted.

It didn’t make sense for a person like Gansey to be friends with a person like Lynch. And yet—they were inseparable.

Adam just tried to focus on keeping his head down, but at the same time being at the top of every class he attended. He wasn’t at Aglionby to make friends or enemies. He was at Aglionby as a means to an end.

But what Adam didn’t know, was that attending Aglionby—and catching the eye of Gansey—would change his life forever. He was ever aware of the curse hanging over his head—his true love would die if Adam kissed him. Adam hadn’t allowed it to become any sort of problem. And for a long time, it wasn’t.

Until now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew this chapter really got away from me lmao. hopefully adam isn't too ooc in here, but i do believe if things had turned out differently, he wouldn't be exactly the same as in the books.

The first time Blue had invited him to the abandoned churchyard, it was April of freshman year, the April before Adam’s first year at Aglionby.

“It’s something us psychics do for St. Mark’s Eve,” Blue had told him.

Adam hadn’t ever heard of the holiday, and didn’t know who St. Mark was, but he agreed to accompany Blue anyway. Regardless of the fact that the _last_ time Adam had agreed to accompany Blue somewhere, it had been one of the strangest experiences of his life.

The church was so old that its name had been forgotten. The interior of the church had long since rotted away and collapsed. What was left were the walls of the church, crawling with hungry vines; and the bleak stone wall surrounding the church and its yard, dark and crumbling.

Blue and Adam had entered the churchyard from an unbelievably small gate, and followed the gravel to the interior where there was a path of loose soil cleared of weeds or any invading plants. They leaned against the wall of stone, utterly silent.

Blue seemed impervious to the spring chill, but Adam was shivering in his coat. April 24th, St. Mark’s Eve, seemed colder this year than it had before. _April wasn’t usually this cold, was it?_ He thought.

“What even is St. Mark’s Eve?” Adam asked, breaking the silence.

Blue looked at Adam without turning her head from where it rested on the stone wall, facing straight ahead. She said, “It’s nothing. Nobody celebrates it. Nobody knows about it. At least, nobody _living_. The dead, however—they remember. They remember all.”

The hungry vines lining the crumbling church walls seemed to snap at him.

“Spooky,” Adam said.

Blue rolled her eyes at him dramatically.

He simply didn’t want to admit to himself that there was something about this place, something about this day, that was making him apprehensive, just like that day last year had been. That sensation of _otherness_ seemed to hang low in the fog, enclosing Adam in its silent embrace.

The churchyard was nestled in the wooded foothills outside of Henrietta. If Adam searched, he knew he would find the blue haze of the mountaintops nearby. The trees surrounded them on all sides. He felt his heartbeat in his toes, as if the ground was pulsating from underneath, pushing upward toward him.

“Your parents know you’re ‘at work,’ right?” asked Blue suddenly.

“Yeah, a late shift,” replied Adam.

To this day he still wasn’t completely certain if Blue had deduced the state of his home life. Surely her psychic abilities had revealed something to her at some point? Whatever happened to be the case, Adam wasn’t sure what he would have preferred. He didn’t want to lie to Blue; he wanted to trust her with something like this. But at the same time, he didn’t want her to worry about him or think it was her responsibility to do something about it. He didn’t want to see the look in her eyes when she found out. If she hadn’t already.

“It’s almost midnight,” Blue informed him. “They should be coming soon, but there’s really no way to know. The dead keep dreadful time.”

“Why did you bring me along, again?” said Adam.

“Because I wanted company,” she said. “And I needed you specifically to come. I felt like something would happen only in your presence.”

“Oh,” said Adam, lamely. As much as he didn’t believe in this supernatural stuff, he didn’t feel like it would be wise to question what Blue said. She could be rather opinionated. If you were on the opposing side of an argument with Blue, there was no way you would fare well, much less win.

They waited for many more long minutes, and in each of them, Adam worried about if he would be able to sneak home without waking his parents. It was late already, and he had no idea how long this would take. Luckily he’d finished his homework before coming here.

“I’m gonna miss you, you know,” Blue said quietly. She fiddled with her hands, not knowing what to do with them.

“I know,” replied Adam. “I’ll miss you too.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, feeling the brisk wind on his face.

“I’m just scared. For you.”

Adam opened his eyes abruptly. He looked at Blue, perplexed. “Why?”

“It’s complicated. I’m scared for you because I know what those raven boys are like. I’m scared that they’ll make you miserable. I’m scared that you’ll become one of them. But, most of all, I’m scared you’ll fall _in love_ with one of them.”

“I—” Adam didn’t know what to say to that. He wasn’t scared of any of those things. He knew, realistically, he wouldn’t ever actually _become_ one of them. And he knew, with a grim yet firm certainty, that he would _never_ fall in love with one of them.

“Look, I know you don’t believe in that curse,” said Blue, “but I know better. And I’m scared to death for you. I know you wouldn’t actually kill someone. Obviously I know you can control yourself. I’m just scared that you’ll get your heart broken.”

Adam sighed. “I know. I get why you feel like that. But I’m _not_ going to fall in love with any of them because they’re all fake and superficial. And I’m not someone who can love or be loved like that. I just can’t do that right now. And besides, we’re literally going to sophomore year. There’s no way I’ll meet my true love in high school. That just seems oddly unrealistic.”

Blue laughed quietly but humorlessly. “I hope, for your sake, that’s true.” She stood from the wall, getting back on her feet. “I think it’s time.” She turned to Adam. “You know what to do, right?”

“Yeah,” replied Adam.

It took a shorter time than he expected. Once they were done, they had a rather large list of people who were going to die in the next year, which was particularly unnerving.

Adam scanned the churchyard, as if expecting to see something himself. He didn’t see any spirits—only Blue had. He wasn’t a psychic. Adam briefly wondered if everything was false and Blue was simply pulling some sort of elaborate prank on him.

“Wait,” murmured Adam. “There’s another one.” He hadn’t realized what he was seeing until he told Blue he was seeing something.

It was a spirit, wandering across the clearing. At least, he thought it was a spirit.

Blue inhaled sharply. She jogged over to the spirit, and Adam followed suit. When they ended up in the middle of the churchyard, they found the spirit now sitting on the grass, twisting it in its fingers.

As they got closer, Adam realized that the spirit was more boy-looking. He was rumpled and faded looking, with fair hair combed back on his scalp and a raven-breasted sweater. He looked both seventeen, and ageless at the same time.

“Who are you?” Blue asked sharply. “Are you a spirit?”

The boy looked up. “Yes,” he said.

“But you aren’t crossing the corpse road into the gate,” she said suspiciously, narrowing her eyes. “You’re just… sitting here..”

“I’m already dead,” the boy replied calmly, unbothered by her tone. “I’ve been dead for seven years.” He turned away from the both of them and watched the grass on the ground. “Wait, sorry. Five years, I mean. Time gets confusing after a while,” he said quietly.

Blue’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Noah,” he said. “Noah Czerny.”

“Hi, Noah,” Blue said. “I’m Blue. This is Adam.”

Adam waved shyly. Noah waved shyly back.

“If you’re not a spirit of the future dead,” Blue said. “Then why are you here? At the churchyard on St. Mark’s Day?”

Noah shrugged. “I don’t know. The line’s stronger over here right now. And I felt like having some company.”

Blue smiled at him. “Okay,” she said. “It was really nice to meet you, Noah.”

“It was nice,” he agreed.

Blue sat down next to Noah on the grass. She began talking to him about anything and everything. Noah sat silently, nodding every so often, as she told him about her family, Fox Way, about school, about Adam and their friendship. Adam could tell Noah didn’t like to talk much, but he clearly enjoyed simply sitting on the grass with Blue, listening to her speak.

The April chill was already freezing, but sitting next to Noah seemed to suck what little heat was left also out of Adam’s body. He could barely feel his toes.

Blue and Noah had become fast friends. When it was clear it was becoming way too late, Blue stood up and said goodbye to Noah. He tousled the uneven tufts of her hair, and she laughed delightedly at the touch, though Adam couldn’t imagine how cold Noah’s hands had to be on her head. It couldn’t have been too pleasant.

“Can you appear in other places too?” Blue asked Noah. “Could you visit Fox Way, or meet us at Nino’s or something? Or do we only see you on St. Mark’s Eve?”

“I’m not sure,” Noah admitted. “It’s hard to be here. You make it better. Today makes it better.”

Blue said, “Okay.” She gave him one last hug and then she and Adam packed up for the night.

This was the first time they had gone to the churchyard and met Noah.

***

The second time was two years later. Blue hadn’t taken Adam in sophomore year; he’d been too busy. She also hadn’t invited him, so Adam didn’t ask. But in junior year, Blue insisted that he needed to come. She was sensing that something monumental would happen in his presence. She’d said the same thing two years ago—and he supposed something _had_ happened, meeting Noah—but it wasn’t really what he expected.

Adam had an inkling that this year was going to be different.

Blue, at sixteen, was pretty much the same height she had been at thirteen. She was still the same stubborn, opinionated, and fierce person she’d always been. And Adam was still the same person he’d always been: always tired. He still refused anything from anyone that he didn’t work for himself, and wouldn’t accept pity. But, ever since both of them tried to date this year, their relationship changed in a way that Adam wasn’t particularly comfortable with.

Adam knew that he was attracted to Blue; he’d always been. Adam also knew that he loved Blue; he’d always loved her. It wasn’t enough for Blue. She knew, because of his curse, that she wasn’t his true love. And the inverse was implied: It meant he wasn’t _her_ true love. She felt that Adam was simply ‘settling’ for her, which pissed both of them off. Blue had wanted something more than just being a consolation prize, but she just didn’t understand. Adam wanted _her_. He didn’t believe in that stupid curse. He wanted her because he loved her. It was simple. But Blue had never been simple. She had never wanted simple.

It made Adam absolutely loathe his curse. He had thought that it was a blessing at first; it meant he had an excuse. It meant that he could justify not having someone to love. It meant it confirmed that he couldn’t be loved. It was an explanation, one that he was satisfied with. But it had messed up his relationship with Blue. He finally understood why it was a curse, though perhaps not for the reason that was originally intended.

The whole situation made Adam want to punch a wall, but he respected Blue and valued their friendship enough to rein it in. It hurt—God, it _hurt_ —but he just had to deal with it. Maybe he was shallow for it. Whatever.

This year, when they got to the churchyard, Noah was already there waiting for them, sitting in the grass like he had last time.

Blue ran to Noah, and he got up to ruffle her hair affectionately. Something about the scene made Adam’s heart hurt. He remembered when their friendship used to be like that.

A moment later, Noah and Adam bumped knuckles. Noah had inserted himself into Adam’s group of friends at Aglionby earlier that year. He hadn’t told Blue this new development, and he also hadn’t told his friends that their new friend Noah was dead. Adam remembered how Noah had told them it was hard to appear anywhere other than here, but he supposed Noah had finally figured it out.

“Are you ready, Adam?” Blue asked him.

He nodded stiffly, not trusting himself to say anything. All he had to do was write down names of spirits Blue saw as she shouted them out to him. Most of the time, he didn’t recognize the names, but sometimes they happened to have the same last names as kids from Aglionby or other rich Virginia families.

Blue started shouting out names to Adam in hyper-speed, and Adam, having had practice in the art of writing fast to keep up with a voice, wrote them down phonetically with precision and accuracy.

Slowly, the names started coming at him much slower, and Adam took a second to shake out his hands.

“Two more,” Blue said quietly, staring ahead.

Adam looked up to where she was watching the clearing. He, not being a seer, couldn’t see spirits that crossed the threshold of the church gate like Blue did. Noah, already being dead, was an exception. Noah had told them he didn’t appear to everyone, but said people didn’t necessarily have to be a seer to see him.

Which should have made it impossible for Adam to have seen the spirit across the clearing that he did. The _two_ spirits. There were two.

Blue walked over to one and asked for its name. “Gansey,” Blue said to Adam. “Richard Gansey.”

Adam inhaled sharply. _Did she just say—_

“ _No_ ,” he squeaked. He wasn’t sure if he had said anything at all, or if he had just thought it. Nothing could have prepared him for this. This night. Tonight. “It can’t be,” he whispered softly, so softly that he knew Blue couldn’t hear him.

“What?” Blue said worriedly. Adam didn’t say anything else—he _couldn’t._ There was too much to process.

_No. Please no._

The first spirit wore a raven-breasted sweater, identical to the one Adam wore except for the fact that it was new and not secondhand. The faint scent of mint drifted to Adam, and his pulse heaved. _Gansey._

He looked to a few feet away and saw a different spirit. Adam couldn’t make out his face or any defining features, but as he stepped closer to the spirit, he recognized the signature getup of black muscle T and dark jeans. The stale stench of alcohol and burnt rubber was all too familiar.

He’d have recognized that signature getup anywhere. His heart felt like it would jump out of his throat.

_No._

“I see them,” Adam whispered miserably. “I see them.” He closed his eyes tightly because he didn’t know what else to do. He could feel cracks, fracturing ever so slowly like ice, all over his composure, only requiring the slightest touch for everything to simply shatter.

Blue’s eyes widened into large circles. “You serious?” she hissed.

It wasn’t like the way Adam had seen Noah. Noah was already dead. His two best friends were very much alive. Very, very alive; so alive that it was impossible to consider his friends being anything else.

Adam couldn’t stop staring at the spirits he was seeing. He didn’t know why he was seeing them, but he desperately wished he could unsee it.

“You shouldn’t be able to see them,” Blue breathed, mostly to herself despite having addressed Adam. “It’s not possible. Unless…”

She snapped her head up at once, meeting Adam’s helpless gaze. She went to follow where the second spirit was.

“What’s your name?” she asked the spirit gently.

Adam heard the name in his head before he heard it said aloud. In his sharp, cutting voice, he said, _Ronan Lynch._

“You know these people,” Blue said flatly.

Adam didn’t trust his voice. “They’re my friends.”

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s day,” Blue began. She didn’t mention how Adam had seen _two_ spirits. “Either that person is your true love, or you’ve killed them.”

Adam felt the words settle in his belly before his brain processed the words. His curse didn’t seem so unbelievable. He’d seen enough of ghosts and spirits and dead people and Maura and Blue and Calla and Persephone perform seemingly impossible psychic readings to _not_ know for sure that these things were _real_. They weren’t simply figments of his imagination. They weren’t dreams—they were reality.

And the reality was this: Adam was either to fall in love with one of his friends, or kill one of his friends, or both. Maybe because of his curse. Maybe not.

Either way, Adam felt like his knees were going to give out.

***

Adam remembered the first time he spoke to Richard Campbell Gansey III.

He’d heard of the boy for longer. It was hard not to know of Gansey—he was friendly with everyone: students, faculty, anyone really. Anybody who Gansey needed to win over, was easily won over by him. All he needed to do was pull out a cordial smile and a powerful politeness and instantly you were under his spell.

After being friends with Gansey for over a year, Adam had found that it wasn’t all too bad to be under Gansey’s spell. He was friendly, polite, and made you feel special. Well, most of the time.

Even originally knowing all this about Gansey without having known Gansey, it didn’t stop Adam from resenting him and everything he had. His way of talking to people that made everyone like him. Just his overall Ganseyness was something that Adam simultaneously wished he had, and wished he could know better.

It was a month and a half into school. Adam remembered seeing Gansey’s burnt orange ’73 Camaro with its black stripe over the hood on the side of the road as he was biking home. He didn’t remember the decision to stop, or even what had made him decide to, but as soon as he did, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.

Adam helped him fix up his car and taught him how he had done it after Gansey had asked him to. They struck up a friendly conversation about school and homework and Latin and Gansey’s search for an ancient Welsh king, and the next thing he knew, Adam was being driven to school three days a week by Richard Gansey in that same Camaro, with Ronan Lynch lounging in the passenger seat. Adam hadn’t known anything quite like this before.

Adam also remembered the first time he spoke to Ronan Lynch, Gansey’s hawkish, sharp-mouthed best friend. The memory was quite different than that of his first conversation with Gansey.

When he had met the burnished Gansey, he had expected condescension and rudeness, but he was surprised to find none. At least, nothing intentional on Gansey’s part, as far as Adam could tell. Once he started speaking to Adam about an ancient Welsh king that he had never heard of, Adam saw the way his eyes sparkled, and he knew that there was a layer of Gansey that he hadn’t yet uncovered. Something beyond the money and the politician’s smile. It made it easier to be friends with someone like him.

But being friends with Gansey meant that by proxy, he had to be friends with Ronan Lynch. This feat, however, was close to impossible. Lynch, despiser of everyone except Gansey, skipper of classes, heavy drinker, a boy whose words were only abrasive and cutting, was not someone Adam could be friends with.

Adam Parrish was used to snatching what he wanted straight out of life’s cold, balled hands. He didn’t wait for things to be offered or given to him. It was how, despite having less time than his peers, Adam was at the top of every class he took. Except for one. How ironic it was—the one class Adam couldn’t be at the top of was taken by the one boy who barely attended class.

Adam hated Ronan Lynch for several reasons. He was the reason Adam wasn’t at the top of his Latin class, he was _ridiculously_ attractive, but worst of all, he was an asshole.

The day after Adam had spoken to Gansey for the first time, he had sat in Latin class wondering if once he got to class, he would sit by Adam or if their conversation from yesterday was a one time thing. When Gansey slid into the seat behind Adam and exchanged conversation with him, Adam felt a glimmer of hope bloom in his chest. Maybe Aglionby wouldn’t be so bad, if someone like Gansey was charmed enough by Adam to want to be his friend. Things would be okay.

That glimmer of hope disappeared once Gansey’s best friend stormed into class with a sneer and slumped into his seat, promptly lifting his feet up and crossing them on the desk in front of him.

“Ronan,” said Gansey. “Put your feet down.”

Ronan put his feet down.

“Who’s your new pet project, Gansey?” Lynch asked, curling his lip at Adam in disdain. “Didn’t know you started babysitting hicks now.”

“Ronan, this is Adam,” Gansey replied, deigning not to entertain Lynch’s jab at Adam. “Adam Parrish. He helped me fix up the Pig yesterday. We started talking, and he’s quite impressive. Head of all his classes.”

Adam flushed at Gansey’s tone. It was inching toward a level of admiration that he wasn’t remotely used to. It was so obviously different from the way Lynch had insulted him that Adam didn’t know how to react.

Ronan smirked unkindly. “Not all of them.”

How did _Lynch_ know about what he was and wasn’t at the top of? And who was he to act so smug when he didn’t even _attend_ class?

Adam didn’t want to interact with Lynch more than he had to, but he couldn’t stop himself from challenging so, so slowly, “And what do you know?” Adam raised his gaze to Lynch’s frigid blue eyes, cold as ice. It all felt like a dare. Like he was taking a leap in the dark, not knowing what awaited him at the bottom.

Lynch probably didn’t expect Adam to reply in such a way, so he raised a single eyebrow. He might have looked almost impressed. “I _know_ ,” he began snidely, “that you’re not at the top of the class in Latin.”

Gansey looked between the two of them cautiously, like he didn’t know where the conversation was going to go, and was preparing for the worst. But he didn’t speak or interrupt.

“And how do you know that?” Adam crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, waiting for Lynch’s answer.

Lynch said, “Because that spot is taken by me.”

His eyes simpered in satisfaction as Adam sat up abruptly, not expecting that answer in the slightest. _Lynch_ , at the head of a class? There was no way that was true.

“Liar,” Adam said, trying to keep the accusing tone out of his voice.

This was perhaps the wrong thing to say. Any notion of Lynch being impressed with Adam’s reaction of him disappeared in one fell swoop. He stared contemptuously at Adam as if a liar was the most offensive thing Adam could have called him. His eyes darkened dangerously.

“Something you should know about me, scholarship boy,” Ronan said scornfully, “I never lie.”

“Something you should know about me,” Adam replied, “I’ll punch you the next time you call me scholarship boy.”

Adam wouldn’t punch Lynch, not really, but it gave him a level of satisfaction to watch the way both of Lynch’s eyebrows shot up toward his buzzed head. Then he regarded Adam warily with eyes narrowed, as if gauging Adam’s threat level.

“We’ll see about that, scholarship boy.”

Adam simply rolled his eyes, not bothering to follow through with his threat. He wasn’t in the business of starting fights.

For a moment, Lynch smirked at Adam and his inability to follow through. Then his scowl returned, as if he remembered that he was supposed to hate Adam’s existence. As the teacher entered the classroom, Lynch shot Adam a piercing glare and turned firmly away from him, not looking back for the remainder of the period.

While the teacher was saying something, Gansey leaned over to Adam and whispered, “I’m sorry about Ronan. He can be a bit blunt. He’ll warm up to you soon, I’m sure.”

A bit blunt? An understatement. Adam nodded, but he didn’t believe the words.

In a way, both of them were right. It took a few long months of Ronan snapping at Adam and jabbing insults and glaring at him for Ronan to realize that Adam wasn’t going anywhere. Adam didn’t like to be pushed around by someone like Ronan, so he always shot back equally, even though Ronan’s prodding insults often hit Adam where it hurt. Slowly, though, they eased into a reluctant friendship for Gansey’s sake. They still fought, but those constant jabs weren’t present in every single conversation anymore.

There was a time, a few months later, where Adam had come to school with a bruise that he couldn’t hide or skip class for, its soft, delicate edges spreading over his right cheekbone like a galaxy. He was in a shit mood.

He had slumped into his seat, eager to keep his head down to avoid Gansey or Ronan and their vaguely invasive questions. Unfortunately for him, Ronan had a unique skill of getting under Adam’s skin when Adam was most uncomfortable.

Ronan noticed him immediately. He raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything. Adam threw him a look that said he wasn’t in the mood to talk about it, and so Ronan didn’t say anything to him for the entire period. Adam hoped that maybe Ronan would leave him alone for once, but of course, this wasn’t the way Ronan worked.

After Latin ended and Adam was making his way out the door to avoid conversation, Ronan sidled up to him and elbowed him.

Adam glared at him, but of course this drew more attention to what was on his face. “What do you want?”

Ronan’s head cocked dangerously and something in his eyes sparkled when he asked, “What the hell happened to your face?” He looked almost excited about the prospect of Adam getting himself into fights that Adam almost let out a hysterical laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” replied Adam curtly, signaling the end of this conversation that hadn’t really started. He began briskly walking away from Ronan, to his locker.

But Ronan wasn’t one for recognizing or following social cues, so of course he didn’t let it go. He followed Adam to his locker and leaned against them as Adam ignored him, getting his books.

“What part of ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ do you not understand?” Adam asked after a minute of Ronan’s intense staring, his Henrietta drawl peeking out and betraying his irritation.

“None of it,” Ronan replied. “Who gave you that shiner, Parrish?”

All at once, Adam was done with Ronan’s bullshit. He knew it was a lie, but all he said was, “You should see the other guy,” before slamming his locker shut and walking to his next class. He sneaked a glance at Ronan behind him, whose mouth quirked in what could only be described as grudging respect.

***

Once Adam got back to the trailer after his and Blue’s trip to the churchyard, he didn’t sleep. Not a wink.

Adam knew, subconsciously, that he had an early shift the next day at the factory. He knew he needed to at least try to get some sleep, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to function in school.

His mind didn’t want to listen to such advice. It was racing. Adam couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in the churchyard. His mind hastily tried to connect the dots of his curse, the spirits of the future dead that had included the only two friends he’d made at Aglionby, with Blue’s words—that he’d only been able to see those particular spirits because he was destined to either fall in love with one of them, or kill them. Adam didn’t believe in fate and tried not to let his curse define him—but even he had to admit that the connection between these things was rather cruel for fate to throw at him.

Life had already given him enough shitty things to deal with. He didn’t need to add another one to the pile. Adam tolled over in his thin mattress and tried to quiet his mind enough to go to sleep.

The phantom memory of Gansey and Ronan never quite left him, though. Once he woke up and left for his shift, it was the only thing keeping him company.

Hours passed quicker than Adam thought possible, and class came way too soon. First period seemed to last all of five minutes. Second period hurtled into view; this was the class Ronan and Adam shared. Adam didn’t know how he would be able to face his friends. How could he keep something like this secret? Adam prayed to every God he could think of that Ronan would decide to skip class today. He usually skipped class.

But of course, cruel fate and Adam’s shitty luck resolved that Ronan would attend class instead. Adam’s heart sank.

The school bell rang, and a few moments later, Ronan appeared in the doorway of class. He stalked over to his usual seat beside Adam and glowered at it contemptuously for a moment before sitting.

“Didn’t want to skip class today, did you?” Adam muttered under his breath ruefully.

Ronan gave him a flat look, apparently having heard him. “Nice to see you too, Parrish.”

Adam rolled his eyes and kept his gaze studiously in front, trying his best to ignore Ronan’s stare.

He didn’t relent. “What the hell’s up with you?” asked Ronan, gesturing to Adam’s face.

Adam knew, for a fact, there was no bruise or redness or blood or anything otherwise evident on his face for Ronan to be referring to. “What?” he snapped, not having the energy to keep his tone civil.

“I _mean—_ ” Ronan kicked Adam’s chair leg in irritation. “—you have fucking bags under your eyes. And not your usual ‘oops I accidentally studied all night before an early shift’ bags. Couldn’t sleep?”

Ronan’s tone was dry, but if Adam wasn’t so goddamn tired, he might have tried to understand what it meant for Ronan to be concerned like this and for him to have felt the need to disguise it behind a mocking attitude.

“It’s really none of your business, Lynch,” replied Adam, in a way that made it clear he was itching for a fight. He wished his eyes didn’t feel so heavy-lidded. “How can you tell, anyway?”

Ronan’s arrow slit eyes narrowed further, but otherwise declined the invitation to start another one of their typical fights, which surprised Adam thoroughly. He said, “I know what a face looks like when it can’t sleep.”

What he didn’t say, but Adam knew was implied: _I see it in the mirror._ Adam knew that Ronan often suffered sleepless nights—a product of his insomnia—usually spent in the backseat of his car; on the streets looking for trouble; in a pew in the back of St. Agnes church, drunk; or in companionship with Gansey at Monmouth Manufacturing, who suffered from insomnia as well. Adam had never seen bags under Ronan’s eyes, like there were under his own, but he supposed Ronan behaved like his waking hours were simply a fever dream.

Adam sighed. “I’m fine, Ronan.” An olive branch extended. A silent apology.

“Okay, Parrish.”

They didn’t speak for the remainder of the period. Adam was grateful. They didn’t speak as second period ended and they walked to Borden House for Latin. This was the class they shared with Gansey.

Gansey never showed up for class. Ronan skipped class as he pleased, and Adam sometimes was forced to miss class because of evidence he couldn’t always hide, but Gansey didn’t skip class unless there was a good reason.

“Where’s Gansey?” Adam hissed to the desk behind him, where Ronan was sitting, finally garnering the courage to speak.

Ronan shrugged. “Fuck if I know. He said something about doing something last night. Don’t remember.”

“Helpful,” said Adam, dryly.

He didn’t remember Gansey mentioning anything he was doing yesterday night. But then again, Adam didn’t tell _Gansey_ he was going with Blue to the churchyard. Why would he, though? 

Gansey’s disappearance probably had something to do with his Glendower search or his ley lines. It hadn’t occurred to Adam to connect one group of supernatural occurrences with the possibility of another. Now that he’d seen Gansey’s and Ronan’s spirits, he’d realized that perhaps it was time to bring the two parts of his life together. Adam was sure that there was some correlation between seeing their spirits, and Gansey’s Glendower and ley line search. He would have to ask Blue about it.

Adam lay his head in his hands, rubbing exhaustion from his eyes with the heels of his hands. He couldn’t help but feel that his friends were in danger because of _him_. It was going to be his fault if something happened to them.

“You gonna make notes for Gansey?” Adam asked. This was a stupid question, because Adam knew the answer.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Ronan, “fuck no. You make notes for Gansey.”

“Can you like,” began Adam, “text Gansey, or something? Ask where he is?”

This was another stupid question. Ronan despised his phone. “You text him,” Ronan grunted. His disinterest was evident in his tone, as well as his hatred toward his phone.

For a second, Adam thought Ronan was being cruel, that this was another jab about how he didn’t have a phone, that he was so poor he couldn’t even afford—

Ronan held his phone out for Adam to take. He did. Their fingers brushed as he did and he faintly felt Ronan stiffen. He opened the phone and sent a quick text to Gansey. He handed the phone back to Ronan but he wouldn’t take it back. Adam rolled his eyes and slipped the phone into his pocket. He was pretty sure he was in possession of Ronan’s phone more than Ronan was.

He wrote notes for Gansey because Ronan wouldn’t. Gansey would have written notes for _him._ After third period ended and Adam went to his other classes, he anxiously waited for Gansey’s response. It came during seventh period.

_The Pig broke down. Come get me. I’m at the Exit 64 sign._

Adam didn’t have a car, but he assumed Ronan had driven to school. He would have to ask Ronan to go pick Gansey up, but if Gansey wasn’t in class then Ronan probably skipped the rest of the day. Adam didn’t know where he would find him.

_We’ll come soon as we can._ Adam replied.

After seventh period ended, Adam found Ronan leaning casually against the hood of his BMW, hands shoved in pockets and one heel pressed against a silvery wheel. As Adam approached, Ronan lifted his head and peered at him carefully, blue eyes peeking beneath his lashes. Even now, Adam fought the urge to straighten his messenger back on his shoulders or pick at the loose thread on the collar of his sweater.

“Not going to eighth period, Parrish?” asked Ronan, his eyebrow arched judgmentally. “Ballsy.”

Adam snorted, but didn’t reply for a second. He climbed into the passenger seat, the black leather digging into his back uncomfortably. “Gansey needs ya to pick him up. Henrietta sign on 64,” he replied.

“That fucking piece of shit car of his stopped again, didn’t it,” said Ronan, fonder than Adam expected from him. The Camaro _was_ a piece of shit, but it meant everything to Gansey.

Ronan sped out of the lot. Adam began to reply, but then Ronan’s phone rang. Adam thumbed the phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen. The caller ID simply said DBAG LYNCH. He began to answer, but out of nowhere, Ronan swatted the phone out of Adam’s hand with a force that startled him thoroughly.

“What the _hell—_ ” Adam’s voice brayed against his will.

“Ignore it,” Ronan said calmly, as if he didn’t just startle the wits out of Adam.

The phone rang once again. Adam went to answer once again, because it was Declan, which meant two things: It could have been important, and Ronan would never pick it up.

Ronan snarled, “I said _ignore it._ ”

Adam turned harshly to glare at him. “How about you just _tell_ me next time, asshole.” Ronan knew why Adam had reacted the way he did. He looked slightly chastened, but it could have been Adam’s imagination.

“I did,” muttered Ronan. “Whatever.” He turned up his shitty EDM music, which practically made Adam’s ears bleed. He could feel the bass pounding even over his own heartbeat.

The BMW zoomed down the interstate in a manner that Adam was familiar with, but wasn’t even close to comfortable with. He gripped the handle tightly. Soon, Adam could faintly see a speck of orange on the shoulder ahead. Despite being well over the speed limit, Ronan smoothly put on the breaks and entered the shoulder, coming to a stop behind the Pig with the grace of an ice skater. As he exited, Ronan slammed the car door. Adam did the same a moment later, except with less slamming, more gently.

Gansey looked up from where he was bent over the hood of his orange-and-black car. He seemed to be inspecting something under the hood. “Adam! Ronan!” said Gansey warmly. “You two are here early. Isn’t eighth period still going on?”

Ronan’s smile was thin and sharp. It faintly resembled the shark-like grill of his car. “Well, Parrish here decided to _skip_ class,” he said, drawling the word _skip_ mockingly.

Adam ignored him. “Thought you needed to be picked up now,” he replied. “That’s why we came.”

“Oh. Sorry for the confusion,” Gansey said apologetically. “I didn’t mean for you to skip class. Ronan could have picked me up instead, you know. Something tells me he skipped.”

That _something_ was that he always skipped. The other _something_ was that he’d clearly gone to Monmouth after Latin. He had changed out of his Aglionby uniform and now wore his usual black tank and dark jeans.

This made Adam notice that despite not having gone to class, Gansey was wearing his uniform. These two things occurred to Adam as the same outfits he had seen on the spirits the previous night. He wasn’t sure if those spirits were wearing what they were wearing when they were supposed to die, or if it was just simply the most common outfit of theirs.

“He did,” Adam said. “I had to come. Who else would be able to figure out what’s wrong with your Pig?”

Gansey laughed a short laugh. “Come see. I tried to figure out what’s wrong, but I’m afraid I failed. You’d be a better candidate to try and fix it.”

While Adam was tinkering beneath the hood, he said, “Where were you?” He didn’t mean for his tone to sound so accusatory.

“I was up all night last night,” Gansey said simply. “Recording.”

“Recording what?” Adam demanded. He too was up last night. The coincidence was not something Adam could ignore.

“Yesterday was a,” Gansey faltered, “special day. For seers. I was recording outside of a church to play back anything the frequency might have picked up from another part of the ley line.”

“Oh,” Adam said. His blood ran cold. He tried to keep his tone level. “Did you find anything?”

Gansey brightened. “As a matter of fact, I did. I’d like you both to listen to what I heard. A lot of it was empty. I was listening to it the whole day today. Nothing. Until about an hour ago. The recorder played something. And then the Pig stopped suddenly. You won’t believe what I heard.”

Adam nodded. Swallowed. Continued to find what was wrong with the Pig so they could get out of here.

From a few feet away, Ronan said, “Coincidence? I think not.”

It turned out Adam probably didn’t even need to keep this a secret for long, because Gansey and Ronan were going to figure it out and everything was going to go to shit before Adam could even do anything about it.

Adam bent down and out from under the hood a minute later. “Try the engine,” he called to Gansey.

Gansey nodded and got into the driver’s seat. The engine turned over and over until finally, with a shuddering groan, it roared to life. Gansey grinned from where he was sitting. “The Pig lives to fight another day.”

Adam snorted. “More like only until we get back. I have to take a closer look later. This is temporary.

Gansey shrugged. The grin didn’t leave his face. “So be it.” He turned in the direction of the passenger seat and dug in the glove compartment until he found what he was looking for: a small device. A digital recorder. He got out of the car and strode to where Adam had moved, closer to the BMW. “You boys want a listen?” He held up the recorder in his hand, brandishing it with a small shake of his hand.

Adam really did _not_ want a listen. Somewhere inside him, he knew what he would hear. Adam nodded, however, allowing his mouth to quirk in a reluctant smile. Ronan, now beside him, shrugged as if he couldn’t have cared less—but his silence plus the gleam in his eyes betrayed the real story.

Gansey clicked the recorder on. There was a lot of static, then silence. Then more static. He tinkered with the buttons for a moment, pressing _rewind_ a couple of times. “Sorry—I skipped past it. Hold on.” He pressed a few more buttons. The static returned.

Ronan was beginning to become visibly impatient. Gansey held up a hand in warning. _Wait._

Then—voices. Murmurs. Barely audible, but clearly present. Adam closed his eyes reflexively, waiting for, anticipating, a sucker punch to the gut.

A voice he recognized very well. Blue Sargent. She was asking someone—something—for their name, gently. Uncharacteristically gentle.

Then, Gansey’s voice. “Gansey,” spirit-Gansey said. “Richard Gansey.” His voice was impossibly small, but not so faint as to be a whisper. Just quiet.

Blue’s voice again. Adam gripped the door handle of the BMW, behind where he was leaning against it, so tightly he was sure his knuckles were white with pressure. She repeated Gansey’s name in that uncharacteristically soft voice.

Then came a squeak Adam surely recognized as his own. His heart jumped; his ribs closed in. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. Adam watched Gansey, searching his face desperately for any hint of recognition, of realization. Then he cut his eyes to Ronan. Normally he was adept at watching people without being watched, observing quietly, ever the scientist. Examining an experiment, testing a hypothesis and surveilling for results. This time, however, he was caught. Ronan had already been looking at Adam. He looked away as soon as Adam became aware of his gaze. His expression was simply pensive, though, eyebrows knitted together.

It was hard to hear the rest. The audio became far away, only picking up murmurs, mere milliseconds of words spoken, catching parts of a voice, here and there. Adam thought it was over.

But then—another name was asked for. This time, a different voice answered the question. Ronan Lynch’s low, rough voice. Telling Blue and Adam from the churchyard his name.

Ronan’s head jerked up upon hearing the sound of his own voice. It was clear this was the last thing he’d expected to hear. Adam couldn’t help but flinch. This—everything—was too painful to watch unfold. He couldn’t bear his friends knowing the truth—that it was Adam’s fault. Everything seemed to be Adam’s fault, didn’t it?

Adam tried to close his ears—he didn’t think he could take anymore of this, this _silence._ He needed Gansey, needed Ronan, to say _something._

“It was my voice,” said Gansey, finally. “I didn’t utter a single word the entire night. And yet, that’s my voice. How is that possible?”

“I wasn’t even fucking there,” said Ronan, “and my voice is there too. What the fuck?”

Gansey blinked. “I don’t know. And who did that other voice belong to? What sort of ordinary explanation could logically explain this? There can’t be.”

Both Gansey and Ronan looked at Adam, though in different ways. Gansey looked at Adam expectantly, hoping for an answer. Ronan looked at Adam with one eyebrow raised, daring him to come up with an explanation.

_Come on, Einstein._

Before last night, Adam had never truly, fully believed in Blue and the psychics. In his curse. Until this moment, Adam hadn’t truly believed Gansey’s search would heed answers. He didn’t think it was anything other than a hobby, or an academic interest, or a way to pass the time when you were so rich boredom overcame you. He didn’t expect it to become a danger to his friends. Something needed to be done.

“I have an idea,” said Adam. “Ronan, give me your phone.”

Ronan scoffed derisively but handed the phone to Adam. He dialed Blue’s house number. He knew she would have a shift at Nino’s in the evening. The dial tone rang for two seconds before someone answered. He was prepared for it to have been anyone in the house—even Orla.

“Hello?” Blue said.

“Blue,” Adam said. “It’s me.”

“Oh! Adam,” exclaimed Blue. She paused. “I don’t recognize the number.”

“Friend’s phone,” he explained. “Listen. You have a shift at Nino’s in the evening, right? If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like for you to meet my friends.”

“You mean your Aglionby bastard friends whose spirits we saw last night? Those friends?”

“Yeah,” Adam replied, praying Gansey and Ronan couldn’t heat what was being said on the other end. “I think you and your family could help. With things.”

“How fun,” she said sarcastically. “Fine. See you then.” She hung up.

Finally as Adam handed the phone back to Ronan did he meet both of his friends’ eyes. They were both surprised.

Gansey asked, “Who was that?”

“That your trailer park girlfriend?” Ronan asked nastily.

“Just can’t help yourself, can you, Lynch?” Adam snapped.

Ronan lifted a single shoulder and quirked the corner of his mouth as if to say, _Nope. I really can’t._

Adam rolled his eyes. “No,” he said dryly. “She actually lives in a house.” At Ronan’s smirk, he clarified, “She’s not my girlfriend.” _Not anymore, at least._ Adam turned to Gansey. “She’s my friend from Mountain View. She and her family are psychics. They deal with this ley line energy stuff. I think. I’m sure they can help.”

Gansey grinned. “I sure hope so. Though I have been to several psychics previously, and none were particularly special or helpful. I’m rather doubtful, but I’d like to be optimistic about results anyhow.”

Adam returned his grin ever so slightly. “Something tells me you might get some actual answers this time. How does Nino’s sound?”

What Adam didn’t tell his friends, was that he didn’t want to go to the psychics for the Glendower search. This was to figure out a way to keep them alive. To navigate this complicated sea of curses, ley lines, spirits, future deaths, and true loves. If one of their deaths—or one of them being Adam’s true love—was his fault, that meant that only Adam had the power to stop it.

***

Adam went back to Monmouth with Gansey and Ronan to pick up Noah, who usually stayed at the apartment. He knew his friends weren’t aware that Noah was dead—they thought Noah went to school with them, but simply weren’t in any classes together. But Adam knew better. He wasn’t about to tell them the truth, however. He didn’t know what that said about himself.

Ronan drove his BMW to Monmouth and left it there when Gansey asked him, Adam, and Noah to get into the Camaro instead. Adam supposed he should have been more stressed out about missing eighth period, but he found he didn’t remotely care. He should have cared. All Adam could do was lean his head back in the back seat of the car and close his eyes. He was so, so tired.

Adam ended up dozing off as they drove to Monmouth, and then to Nino’s. He rubbed sleep from his eyes as someone woke him up with a rough shove.

“Oh, finally, the princess has awoken from her slumber,” a familiar voice said.

“Piss off, Lynch,” Adam grumbled, scowling at Ronan’s smirk. He clambered out of the car and was met with the disgustingly neon sight of Nino’s Pizza. God, he hated the place.

Gansey and Ronan went ahead into the restaurant, while Adam and Noah were still outside.

He turned to Noah. “Blue’s in there,” he warned. “She doesn’t know that you live at Monmouth now, or that you’re friends with them.”

Noah didn’t look exactly alarmed, but his face morphed into something that was shaped like worry. No, it was more like caution. “Okay,” he said. “I wonder what she’ll say.”

“Hopefully she doesn’t accidentally blab about how you’re actually dead,” Adam said with a chuckle. But once he glanced at Noah’s expression, he pursed his lips soberly in apology. “When do you want to tell them?”

“It’s not a secret,” said Noah, a little bit panicked. “I’ve said it multiple times. They just don’t understand. I can’t help that.”

“You’re right, Noah,” Adam said, trying to ease the clear tension in Noah’s expression. “They think you’re joking, but it’s only because it doesn’t occur to them that you might be serious. It’s not your fault, and it’s not theirs. They’re not used to things like that.”

Noah’s pointed stare told Adam that he didn’t believe that in the slightest. Adam realized that Noah was right. Gansey and Ronan believed wholeheartedly in the supernatural, in ley lines, in the possibility of waking Glendower from his slumber. But if they hadn’t found it yet, who was to say it was possible? They could have been delusional.

“It’ll be alright,” Adam said. “Let’s get inside. Blue’s waiting for us. I can try to distract Blue for a while before she comes to talk to all of us. Okay?”

Noah nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

They made their way across the parking lot and into the restaurant. Gansey and Ronan were already seated in their usual booth. Adam looked to the counter. He saw Blue was leaning against the wall behind the counter, glaring at where Gansey and Ronan were sitting. He wasn’t sure if it was because Blue recognized them and knew they were Adam’s friends, or simply because they were clearly raven boys, whom she hated.

Blue cut her eyes to where Adam stood, leaning against the counter, trying to hold back a smile at her glaring.

“Oh, you’re here,” she said. She sounded oddly surprised. “Those your friends over there?” She glanced to where she had been previously glaring.

Adam bit his lip. “Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“The one that looks like he’d punch you in the face is Ronan. The one who looks like a teenaged politician is Gansey,” Adam informed her.

“Yeah, I think I got that,” Blue said sarcastically. “I know what your friends look like. I saw their outfits.”

Adam guessed that neither of them would address the elephant in the room, and he was perfectly okay with that. He slid into one of the stools that were at the counter, his head resting in his palm as he stared at Blue in amusement.

“They’re really not as bad as you think,” Adam said, trying to believe his own words, or at least say them in a way that would allow Blue to believe them partly. He loved his friends, he really did, but there wasn’t much he could do to talk up his friends to make Blue like them at first glance. “You have to get to know them.” He bit his lip to hold back a laugh. It sounded ridiculous even to him.

Blue grimaced as she studied the booth they sat in. “Introduce me, then.” She sounded like she really, really didn’t want to be introduced to them. Where was Noah?

“Please, please, please don’t take them at face value. I promise they aren’t as bad as I know you are going to think they are.” He tried to hide his laugh in his hand, but Blue caught it and glared at him.

“Just come, please,” said Adam. “Maybe they’ll like you more than you’ll like them. That’s supposed to be satisfying, right?”

Blue rolled her eyes as she glanced at the booth one more time. “I guarantee you that they’ll hate me the second I open my mouth. Boys like them don’t like girls like me who dare to tell them off.”

Adam raised his eyebrow. “You so sure you’ll have to tell them off?” He smirked to himself; he could definitely see it happening.

Blue gazed at Adam, completely steady. “One hundred percent.”

Adam waved a hand to her, gesturing for her to follow him. “Let’s do it.”

They both walked over to the booth. Gansey stared wide-eyed at Blue as if he’d never seen an actual human girl in the flesh before. Ronan simply looked unimpressed, or bored, or both. Probably both.

Blue crossed her arms and glared, daring them both to think what they wanted about her.

Adam could feel the tension thick in the air, and they were in Nino’s, for God’s sake. His friends really had to be like this. Jesus Christ. Where the hell was Noah? If anyone could break the tension, it was him.

“Guys, this is Blue Sargent. My friend,” Adam said. He emphasized the word _friend_ slightly, for Ronan’s benefit, lest he try to make the girlfriend joke again. Ronan _really_ didn’t want to make that joke. Blue would blow up on him for it.

“Blue, this is Richard Gansey and Ronan Lynch.”

“ _Richard_ ,” echoed Blue.

Ronan visibly held back a snicker. Adam himself bit back a smile.

“It’s just Gansey,” Gansey said with a grimace. “Wonderful to meet you.” He held out a hand, and Blue stared at it as if she didn’t think it was wonderful to meet _him_ , and that the last thing she wanted to do was take his hand. But Blue wouldn’t start a fight before there was a need to. She shook Gansey’s hand.

“Your girlfriend is shorter than I thought she would be,” Ronan said. He looked completely unapologetic.

Turned out Adam’s effort to prevent Ronan from making the joke was futile. He should have known.

Blue, retaining her stubborn poker face, raised an eyebrow at Ronan and dared him to say anything further.

Ronan leaned toward Blue while still sitting inside the booth. His jaw hardened and his lips were pursed in a thin line. His eyes gleamed dangerously as he prepared to launch possibly into another attack aimed at either Blue’s height or the status of her relationship with Adam.

Gansey opened his mouth, ready to talk Ronan down from whatever he was about to say, but Adam beat him to it. Ronan wasn’t Gansey’s fucking dog. Jesus.

“Lynch.” It was one word, not even angry. But it was as good a warning as anything. Ronan met Adam’s eyes, which were hard and unforgiving. He knew Ronan could and would be an asshole to Blue, but there was a line. Perhaps Blue and Adam’s relationship was a line to him because he was still fresh on the fight they’d had. Her rejection still stung in his chest.

Ronan sat back. He refused to look anywhere but the floor. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and began to chew on his leather wristbands.

Someone tapped on Blue’s shoulder. She whirled, ready to yell at whoever had touched her, when she realized it was Noah. _Finally._ “Noah!” she exclaimed, thoroughly surprised to see him here.

Cheerfully, Noah put his arms around Blue and ruffled her hair. “Hi,” he said.

Gansey and Ronan gaped at the scene unfolding.

“You didn’t tell me you guys knew Noah!” she said, a smile forming on her face, the previous conversation forgotten.

Noah smiled at her, guilty. “Surprise?”

Ronan narrowed his eyes at Blue. “How do _you_ know Noah?” he spat at her accusingly.

Gansey’s expression told Adam he was wondering the same thing.

“I’ve seen him at Nino’s a lot,” she said defensively. “We struck up a conversation a few times. How do _you_ know Noah?”

It occurred to Adam that it was a very plausible question for Blue to ask. But he didn’t want his friends to know who Noah was before Noah was ready, so he quickly changed the conversation topic before Gansey and Ronan could ponder the answer to that question further.

“Blue,” he interrupted. “I was wondering if you had time to talk with us about something. Gansey has been searching for something related to ley lines and I thought you and Fox Way could help with that.”

Blue’s expression hardened. “I have work. My shift isn’t over. My break was an hour ago. I can’t just sit here and talk with you.”

Adam kept his mouth shut. He knew better than to argue or ask Blue to sacrifice her shift to talk to them.

Apparently Gansey had a different idea. “Oh,” he said. “Perhaps I can talk to your manager. How much do you make in an hour? I could—”

“ _No!_ ” Blue sputtered. “You can’t—you can’t just—”

_Oh God._ “Blue—” Adam started.

“I was under the impression that you had to work right now. I didn’t want to leave you unpaid if you were to talk with us, you did say you worked for a living—”

“You can’t just _pay_ me to talk with you,” Blue said, visibly getting angry. “I’m not a prostitute, or something!”

Gansey’s jaw dropped. “That is _not_ what I said,” he argued. “Not even close. I—”

Adam put his head into his hands. “Gansey,” he said. Then, “Blue.”

Ronan looked positively gleeful at the train wreck that had just happened. He thrived on dysfunction. Noah looked awkwardly at them both, not knowing what to do or say. Adam was panicking.

Blue didn’t give Adam enough time to say anything, because she whirled and stormed back to the counter without another word. Adam exchanged a helpless glance with Noah before following Blue.

She glowered at her shoes as Adam slid into the stool he was at last time. “What just happened?” he asked her.

“Your friends are assholes,” she said. “That’s what happened.”

Adam sighed. He couldn’t argue with that. “Gansey means well. He’s stupid about money, really. He didn’t mean it like that.”

“You would think someone with a lot of money would be more conscious about it. People choose to be condescending. And let’s not even mention your other friend.”

Adam grimaced. He knew this would happen. He laid his arms on the counter and put his head in them.

Blue got out two glasses and began to fill them with iced tea. “They’re also really _loud_. As much as I don’t want to talk to them again, I do agree that they should probably visit Fox Way. Their energies are extremely discomfiting. Not even mentioning the fact that they’re supposed to die in the next twelve months.”

Adam’s heart sank at the reminder. “I don’t want them to die.”

Blue touched his hand briefly. “I know. We’ll find a way, okay? Also, why didn’t you tell me about Noah?”

Adam was hoping Blue would have forgotten about Noah. “I—”

“Never mind. It’s whatever. Do they know he’s _dead_?”

“No.” Adam shook his head. “They don’t. Noah isn’t ready for that yet so we’re not telling them until he’s ready, or we find a way that doesn’t make it sound like a joke. He’s said it but they don’t understand yet.”

“Maybe a reading will help them understand,” Blue said. “My mom and Calla can definitely deal with them. Maybe I can go to the mall while they’re at Fox Way. Yeah. That sounds good. Though it might be entertaining to watch Calla yell at them,” she mused.

“When do you ever go to the mall?” Adam said. “Do we even have a mall?”

“No,” Blue agreed, “but I’ll find one.”

“I promise there’s more to then then you see. I think.”

“Tell me, then,” Blue said, raising her eyebrow. “I’m open minded.”

Adam’s shoulders shook with laughter, but he didn’t make a sound. “Your face is exhibit number one of how you are _not_ open minded.”

“Funny.”

“So basically Gansey is a huge nerd. He’s looking for some dead Welsh king supposedly sleeping along the ley line so his entire life is pretty much centered around that, and it’s kind of adorable.”

Blue’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re talking about the politician looking one, right?”

“You think Ronan looks like he could be a history obsessed nerd?”

She shrugged. “You’re the one who told me not to take them at face value.”

“Please take my words with a grain of salt.” Adam lifted his head from his arms.

“Okay, but I think the real question is this: Who’s more attractive?”

Adam turned tomato red at the question, and dropped his head back into his arms. “I am _not_ talking about this with you. No way. Nope. No thank you.”

“And _who else_ exactly are you going to talk about this with?” Blue retorted. “It might as well be me. Come on, tell me. I know you know which of them is more attractive.”

“Blueeeeeeeee,” Adam whined, uncharacteristically. They were _way_ too close to the booth to be having this conversation right now. “I don’t want one of them to walk over here. No way. I don’t want to lose the little dignity I still have.”

“You want me to tell you who I think is more attractive, then?” Blue asked.

Adam lifted his head slightly to look at her. She was smirking. “Not really. I swear, if we have the same taste in guys I think I’d die.”

“Personally, I’d say your rich condescending dick friend is more attractive. His mouth is rather nice. Too bad I hate everything that comes out of it.”

Adam visibly relaxed. He sighed in relief, hoping he was being discrete, but Blue, being Blue, caught it and raised an eyebrow. She smirked again. “Oh no. Don’t tell me. Punk’s your type, huh?”

Adam didn’t think it was possible, but he might have turned even redder. His put his head in his hands. “Gansey has too much of an All-American handsomeness to him. Not really my type. I think.”

Blue cackled at what this implied. “Ronan? Really? I should have known assholes turn you on.”

“Blue, shut up. _Please._ I don’t want to talk about this.” Adam was not going to get up from this stool. Nope. No way. He wasn’t going to lift his head up and risk looking Blue in the eye. He was content to just keep his arms cradled around his head and mumble into the counter.

“Okay but I get it. He’s hot. Not my type, but objectively I can see it. Yup. I can see it. The buzzed head really completes the look.”

“Blue,” he hissed. “Shut up.”

“You haven’t fallen in love with one of them yet, have you?”

Adam didn’t dare look up at her face. “No. Of course not. They’re just my friends.” Attraction, of course, was completely different. He just wasn’t going to say it.

“I was going to say that’s kind of a bummer. I don’t think you could have chosen two more attractive Aglionby boys to fall in love with. They’re easy on the eyes. _Very_ easy.”

Blue just wasn’t going to let this go, was she? Adam said, “You sure they’re the hottest of the bunch? Really?”

“Trust me,” said Blue. “I’ve seen all the raven boys that come by Nino’s. They’re ugly as hell. You scored with these two.”

“Oh my God. I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“No, I think I hate you.”

Adam didn’t lift his head from his forearms all the way, but he lifted it just enough that his eyes were visible. He stared at Blue and that stupid smirk on her face. She looked like she was going to burst out laughing, though, at the same time. Adam wanted to find the nearest corner and disappear into the darkness.

“Tell me something about Ronan. What’s so amazing about him?”

“Literally fuck off,” he said into his arms. He thought he might have squeaked a little bit.

“You might as well accept your fate and lift your head up. I’ve seen you at your more embarrassing times. I’m not going to lie and say I’m not gonna laugh at you, though. I’m definitely going to laugh at you. Just do it, Adam.”

“I hate you,” he said. “Lynch goes to mass every Sunday.”

Blue stared at him for a moment. Then it must have clicked in her head. She burst out laughing. “He goes to church? _Him_? No freaking way.”

Adam let out a helpless wail of laughter and dropped his head back into his arms. “I’m serious. Every Sunday. He and his brothers go to St. Agnes.”

Blue giggled into her apron and turned away. “That’s so ridiculous that I’m sure you aren’t lying to me. Is Ronan lying to you then?”

“He doesn’t lie,” Adam said. “That’s another thing. He always tells the goddamn truth. Also, I went with him once.”

Blue burst out laughing again. “Jesus Christ. Your friends are freaking weird. The politician wannabe can’t speak to a girl to save his life, and your punk slash goth slash grunge friend is a devout Catholic and truth teller. Nice. You really scored with those two, didn’t you?”

Adam was definitely not any less bright red than he was a few minutes ago. “I regret this entire conversation.”

Blue was still laughing, damn her. “Okay, but which one isn’t straight?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Adam hissed at her.

“Maybe _Richard_ ,” Blue said, then immediately burst out laughing. “Jesus. His name is _Richard_. I’ll never get over that.”

Adam said, “No, you don’t understand. That’s not even his full name.”

“No way, what is it?”

“Richard Campbell Gansey the Third.”

They both started laughing again. “Good God,” Blue remarked when she was done. She stifled another laugh. “Jesus Christ. No wonder he just goes by Gansey. Imagine naming your child after you and your child naming his child after you too.”

Adam snickered again. “Blue, _please_.” His face was red from both laughing and from Blue’s teasing.

“I—” Blue started, but then stopped abruptly.

Adam raised his eyes to Blue, but the rest of his face was still covered. She was staring at something behind him with pursed lips.

“Hi,” Adam said, addressing whoever was behind him. He could feel his face and could tell it was still warm, so he didn’t dare turn around.

“Parrish.” It was Ronan’s voice.

“What’s up?”

“Don’t you start your shift soon? I’ll drop you off.”

“Okay. I’ll be right there.”

Footsteps faded.

Adam finally raised his head.

A smirk snaked its way across Blue’s face. He glared at her. She winked at him. He flipped her off.

“You’d better go. Don’t want to keep him waiting,” she said. Adam could tell she was stifling a smile.

“I hate you. Bye. I’ll call you with a date and a time.”

Adam couldn’t have gotten out of that restaurant and away from Blue faster. He looked at neither Gansey nor Ronan for the entirety of the drive back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for the slow updates! i'm not used to writing such long chapters in one go so it takes me a while to write it. thanks for reading and following this story! i'm @bisexual-parrish on tumblr if you want to say hi :)


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